


Maybe Together We Can Get Somewhere

by Yessica



Series: Whumptober 2020 Yessica Edition [25]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Brotherly Bonding, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Light Angst, Remember When They Confirmed Luther Canonically Self-harms, Suicidal Thoughts, That Was Fun :), Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-28
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:06:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27236980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yessica/pseuds/Yessica
Summary: Five had a lot of leftover scars from the time he was gone and while most of them were invisible, some served as a permanent reminder of his own shortcomings. None of his siblings ever knew they were there though. Until one of them did.(Whumptober day 27 - Comfort)
Series: Whumptober 2020 Yessica Edition [25]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1949233
Comments: 11
Kudos: 111
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	Maybe Together We Can Get Somewhere

Five got sloppy.

And it was mostly his own fault. It wasn't easy for him to admit that – really when was _anything_ his fault after all – but being a hired man had its perks and learning to own up to your mistakes was one of them, even if humility would never be Five's virtue of choice.

That didn't change the fact that it was his choice to tug at the sleeves of his blazer until they were bunched up around his elbows, the fabric uncomfortably coarse. It was sweltering hot for early spring, and the mansion was built about as well as a medieval dungeon. Which meant even a mild winter felt like the icy pits of hell and easy summer breezes made the entire house akin to an oven. As kids, they would sometimes go to the roof just to escape the heat, when their father was too preoccupied with whatever the fuck it was Sir Reginald Hargreeves did when he wasn't training his own child militia.

One summer Klaus got an inflatable kiddie pool from god knows where and they filled it up with twenty buckets of tap water, lugging each load up the stairs separately. It was just big enough for all seven of them to soak their feet in, but it was like their own personal resort for a little while.

Come to think of it, that was probably only a few weeks before he ran away.

"What are you doing?" Luther asked, pulling Five out of his own thoughts. He hadn't realized he had even drifted away, the neat lines of text on the paper blurring into a single black bar. He had to blink a few times to get them to straighten out again.

"Calculations."

Luther tilted his head, crossed his arms. Five was pretty confident that even he couldn't read the advanced physics he was jotting down, but Luther had been on the moon, had been an _astronaut,_ so he had to have studied for that. Old Reggie still would not be cruel enough to jettison his discarded son off into space without so much as the necessary knowledge to survive out there. But if Luther could read his scribbling, he didn't let it show.

"Do I even want to know?" he asked.

Five shrugged, smile thin and sharp. "Probably not."

He continued writing in silence, only muttering the odd variable under his breath. Luther stood in the doorway and watched him. Five had no idea what he was thinking or what he came in for, though he didn't particularly care to find out until he was done with this. Rubbing his forehead with one hand, he knew he had fucked up when he heard Luther take in a sharp inhale.

"Luther..." Five started, hoping his voice would carry enough warning to deter him from saying what he was about to say. He really should know better by now, there wasn't a force in the universe that would stop Luther on a mission.

"When did you do that?"

Not the question he was expecting to get. His scars had never been seen by anybody else, even in the commission Five kept them stubbornly covered, and as such he didn't have sufficient metric to know how others would react to them. But if he'd have to guessed he'd think the first question would be what they were, how he got them.

Luther didn't ask either of those.

"I don't want to talk about it," Five said calmly. "Just let it go, Luther."

The gap between them was crossed in a matter of seconds and then Luther was snatching his wrist, turning his arm around to study the pale thin lines running along the skin. He was still wearing the gloves, despite them being inside and everybody already knowing his dirty little secret.

"When did you do this to yourself?" Luther asked.

And it was in that moment Five realized why none of the other questions needed to be posed. Luther didn't need to ask because he already knew. Luther, who was still wearing a sweater as well despite the unbearable summer temperatures.

"You-"

"When?" Luther repeated.

The hold around his wrist was tenuous at best so Five wrenched loose, pulling down his sleeves at the same time. "I told you I don't want to talk about it, didn't I?"

He could see the small frown on Luther's face, showing the answer was not satisfactory at all. Five knew Luther well enough to know the burdens he carried, the responsibility he felt towards them as a leader despite them barely being a team. Their father's poison ran deep.

After a deep sigh, Luther looked away again. "Will you at least tell me if you're still doing it?"

To postpone having to respond, Five took a sip of his coffee. It had gone cold hours ago, bitter and off and he nearly spat it back out. The problem was that there was no easy answer. How long it had been since Five did it mattered little if the urge was still there, residing in the back of his mind at the most inopportune times. Distractions were the only thing that helped, burying himself in inane subjects just to keep occupied.

"Not for a long while," he said eventually. It wasn't a complete lie.

"Good."

Five finally put down his pen, thoroughly distracted from his work. The impulse to leave it at that was nigh intolerable, a can of worms better left unopened. They could both just pretend they hadn't seen anything. But the opposite pull was even stronger, so he turned around on his chair, watched the way Luther stood in the doorway all worried angles and squared back shoulders. "What about you?"

There was no surprise in Luther's expression, he wasn't an idiot. He knew that by seeing through Five, he would have to allow himself to be seen through. "About the same." Offering no further explanation Luther walked around the desk and sat down on Five's bed, which bent heavily between his weight.

"The moon?" Five inferred.

Now Luther did look caught out. "How did you-"

"It was the apocalypse for me. Plenty of time, no connections and little common sense, a recipe for disaster really."

Dolores used to scold him, told him that what he was doing was bad for his health. He didn't try to explain to her it was the opposite. Sometimes the pain was all that could tether him to reality, could keep him believing things were real and they mattered. When all Five wanted to do was to die, the scars reminded him he wasn't allowed to.

They gave him comfort when nothing else could.

"Loneliness, I guess," Luther said idly. "Hunger, boredom, whatever you want to call it."

Five was certain there was more to the story than that but wasn't about to pry. His arms itched for something else, solid craving. "But not anymore."

Luther smiled in that way of his where it was not quite sincere but not pretend either. "Not anymore."

Neither of them was naive enough to believe it was that simple. The scars remained and all the actions that caused them stuck to them like glue. Starting was a slippery slope and stopping an uphill struggle, there would always be comfort in the knife.

But knowing you weren't by yourself might just be half the battle, if maybe they could find that comfort in each other instead

"So... _do_ you want to talk about it?" Five asked. "Because I'm kind of busy here."

"Oh god no." Luther got up again with a laugh. "I actually just came up here to tell you dinner is ready."

Closing the book, Five rolled his eyes. "You could have lead with that."

They went downstairs together, Luther with his sweater and Five with his blazer. And for then, that would just have to be enough.

**Author's Note:**

> [my Tumblr](http://sharada-n.tumblr.com/)


End file.
